


what am i to write?

by onetrueobligation



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, Introspection, Letters, Missing Scene, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 15:59:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15246789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onetrueobligation/pseuds/onetrueobligation
Summary: Andrei receives two letters from Moscow -- neither of them with good news.





	what am i to write?

**Author's Note:**

> hey there! this is a little thing i felt the need to write after watching a fantastic 'letters' animatic by okodnol on youtube. i don't write very often about andrei, but i couldn't help wondering how he'd react to the two letters he receives. the characterisation is drawn mostly from war and peace, but i used more plot from natasha, pierre and the great comet of 1812.
> 
> really, this is just self-indulgent rambling. if you want some feelings about andrei, feel free to read, but don't expect much coherence or plot.
> 
> also, tiny warning for vaguely implied depression for both pierre and andrei. enjoy!

Andrei’s last two letters before he returned to Moscow came at once. He’d expected one from Mary, perhaps talking about his father, perhaps sending him prayers, perhaps talking about some Moscow affair or other. He would have been happier, he thought, if she had written.    
  
Instead, the two letters were from the two people dearest to him, besides his sister — Pierre, his closest friend, and Natasha, his beloved fiancée. This should have been wonderful news. Of course he wanted to hear from them both. He loved them dearly, and their letters would surely brighten his day.    
  
That was not the case.    
  
He first read Pierre’s. (He wanted to read Natasha’s, but he couldn’t help the slight twinge of anxiety as he brushed his fingers over the envelope — perhaps, despite her constant insistence that she loved him, that she was waiting eagerly in Moscow for his return, perhaps this time, she’d change her mind, perhaps this would be the refusal he’d been dreading—)   
  
His heart sank as he read through the letter. Pierre, his dear old friend, was sick, he could tell. His first few lines were formalities, followed by an abrupt change in the topic in which he suddenly began discussing the war. It was no secret to Andrei that his friend had a concealed but strong fascination with war, with _l’empereur Napoléon_ , with fighting and blood and battle. Although he rarely mentioned it to his friend, he found it laughable, Moscow’s bland, one-dimensional perception of this fumbling, awkward man — _our Pierre; our peace-keeping Freemason; dear, kind, smart, eccentric_ — when that simply wasn’t the case. While he doubted Pierre had the nerve or the resolve to enlist, he certainly knew his friend well enough to know that he wasn’t simply the bumbling fool society thought him to be.    
  
There was another note attached, some ramblings about the number of the beast — that, when the French alphabet was laid out alongside the Hebrew numerical system, with each letter assigned to a number, the phrase _l’empereur Napoléon_ added up to the number 666 — the number of the Beast — which, apparently, foretold that the Emperor was, in fact, the Antichrist. Andrei read through all of this with a faint, amused smile, although, if he was honest with himself, his heart was sinking. To think, that while he was out here in battle, enjoying the thrill of it all, his friend was shut up in his study, living with a wife he couldn’t love, drinking and reading all alone.    
  
And then, as suddenly as Pierre’s ramblings on the war and Napoleon began, they came to a stop, and he returned to writing of the most trivial things, about Boris Drubetskoy and his new fiancée, about his brother-in-law’s arrival in Moscow and somehow, in his house, and, to Andrei’s surprise, about Natasha — that she was in town, that she seemed as happy and beautiful as ever. It warmed Andrei’s heart to hear, but still, he couldn’t quite shake his distress for his friend.    
  
Once he’d reached the end of the letter — Pierre ending on some miserable note of the irrelevance of existence — he placed it aside with a sigh. He loved his friend, he truly did, but he certainly wasn’t doing himself any favours by talking like that.    
  
He glanced over at the second letter with a faint smile. If Pierre’s letter had disheartened him, he knew hearing from Natasha would lift his spirits — after all, she was ever so different from Pierre, so full of happiness and youth. He found himself tearing open the envelope with something close to excitement, a smile on his face as he began to read.    
  
That smile did not last long.    
  
It was to be expected, of course. Of course. She was young, and he was not. She still had a life to lead. It was no surprise that she no longer wished to be his wife.    
  
And yet, he couldn’t help the way his face crumpled, the way he felt his old bitterness once again seize his heart, the same bitterness he’d felt when his wife died, the same bitterness he thought Natasha had cured.    
  
Of course, he thought with a scowl, crumpling the letter in his hand and throwing it to the ground. He was the fool, for thinking he was loveable, for thinking he could somehow make a good husband to a girl her age — he, a father, a widower? What good would he bring that girl?   
  
Shaking, his hands clenched into fists by his sides, he stormed out of his tent, not knowing where he was going, only that he needed to get _away_.    
  
He’d thought he could change. Thought that Natasha would change him, make him better, heal him. But no — he’d end up like his father, old and bad-tempered; irritable and alone. Or better, just slightly — dead on the battlefield, like so many others.    
  
Natasha was his happiness — so full of life, of joy, excitable and untroubled. And without her —without her, he was just Andrei Nikolaevich. Empty. Lifeless. Nothing.    
  
Well. If that was what God would have him be, so be it.    
  
It was time, anyway, he thought, to return to Moscow.    
  


**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! comments and kudos warm my heart!


End file.
